Chapter 12

When we got back to my place, the comfortable silence continued until we got upstairs and into the apartment.

Sam had a large duffle with him, and he started unloading supplies on my kitchen table immediately.

"Oh, come on, Eddie already looked at it," I said.

Okay, I admit, it was more of a whine than anything else.

"Sam was pararescue," Steve told me. "Which means he's a trained air force field medic."

"Better than going to a hospital, right?" Natasha pointed out.

I pouted a little then sighed and threw myself somewhat dramatically on the couch. I hadn't been planning to go to a hospital anyway.

"I feel like this negates my awesome points," I told them.

"Nah," Sam told me as he approached. "Everyone needs a little fixing up after an op. No big deal."

He was carefully peeling off the bandage so he could do whatever he was going to do, and I felt Steve's warm hand pick up my right hand to inspect it.

"Hurt?" He asked.

"Not bad," I answered honestly. "A little sore but definitely not broken."

"Hmmm," he said, still manipulating my fingers, clearly checking for himself.

"One lesson from Captain America, and I thought I could throw a punch. Go figure, right?" I joked self-deprecating.

"Wasn't bad at all," Steve told me. "Just need to work on your form a little. Your alignment was off, but you got a good amount of power behind it."

I turned my head to look over at him, and I saw that he looked completely sincere, so I let a put upon Sam twist my head back around to him. Near as I could tell his was just cleaning it again and planning to put some sort of goop on it, if the tube I saw laying out was any indicator.

"I missed everything before you jumped on him," Steve said. "That was quite a tackle."

I grinned, and agreed, "it's become one of my better moves. Though I admit I don't always know what to do with them once I get them on the ground."

"What you did today seemed effective enough," Steve replied. "I missed the head injury though, what happened?"

"He waited for me outside the door instead of continuing to run," I started to explain.

"Thought you were faster than him," Natasha mused.

"Well, I didn't see it coming, so as soon as I cleared the door, he grabbed onto me and slammed me into the wall."

"Didn't think you'd be able to get up and go after him," Natasha concluded. "He underestimated you, and you made him pay for it."

"No lecture about how I should have seen it? Been aware of my surroundings?" I asked.

Really I was starting to wonder if I did have a concussion. I mean, it was just so weird.

Nobody was mad at me. Nobody was yelling. Nobody was waving their arms around. Nobody was telling me I was a hopeless disaster.

"I think the injury says it better than I ever could," Natasha said, wincing sympathetically when I hissed out a breath as Sam probed a little. "And really, you're still up and able to fight. You didn't even realize you were hurt until someone said something to you. That's all you can hope for at the end of the day— to live to fight another."

That was almost deep. Really it might have been if I didn't think she might actually just mean it completely literally. Natasha lived each day to fight the next. That was it.

So it was also a little sad.

I glanced over at Steve and he gave his head a small shake, so I let it drop for the time being.

"What's the verdict?" I asked Sam instead.

He didn't immediately reply, instead choosing to do the annoying shine a light in my eyes and ask stupid questions thing. But when he was done he said, "it's not really that bad at all. Head wounds just bleed a lot. Might scar a little, so we can take you to the hospital. They can probably get a stitch or two which might help a little. Might not. Up to you."

Steve had pressed into my side a little, and he was really warm, so I stripped off my jacket as I thought really quickly.

"What the hell," I said, gesturing to my arm bandage. "It's hardly my first scar, and I HATE hospitals. Just do your thing."

"Okay," he told me. "I'm going to use this on it."

He held up the little tube I'd seen earlier, and I got a better look. I asked, "is that super glue?"

"A bit more high tech than that, but similar concept. Truthfully I think this scars less than stitches on the face anyway, but I don't know if that's a scientifically proven fact. Probably not since this is a proprietary blend."

I was going to ask who made it, but he was already applying, and I thought it was best to just sit still.

"No follow up," he continued to explain the virtues of the glue. "No scary needles,. And you can get it wet."

He nodded apparently satisfied with his work and then capped the tube a little.

"These are single use, and that was small," he said. "Want me to take a look at your arm? Make sure it looks like it's healing well, and see if I can take your stitches out and replace with this?'

"Yes!" I eagerly agreed.

I was all for skipping having to make a follow-up doctor's appointment if possible, and I wasn't the best at remembering to keep my bandages out of the water when showering anyway…

Five minutes and a second tube of glue that I felt a little guilty for wasting but Sam didn't seem to mind in the least later I was good as new.

Okay, maybe not exactly, but I was on my way.

I stood up and stretched a little then eyed my three guests. "Lunch?"

"Why don't you hop in the shower," Natasha told me. "Clean the rest of the blood off, and we'll order up some pizzas."

When I got back out of the shower, Steve and Sam were sitting on the couch. They looked up and said, "Natasha asked us to have you come down to your car when you got out, and she said lunch would be about 30 minutes late."

Neither seemed to have more than that to say, so I shrugged, grabbed my bag and a different jacket, and took the stairs at a light jog.

"Don't be mad," Natasha told me as she leaned against the outside of the SUV. "And I promise, they didn't see enough of me to realize it wasn't you."

She had a brown wig in her hand that looked suspiciously a lot like my own hair, and I had no idea what she was talking about. Until she gestured at the SUV and I let my gaze settle on the inside of it.

Inside were the next FOUR skips on my list. All trussed up, blindfolded, and the one who was in the passenger seat looked to be slumped over.

"Maybe take him in last," she told me.

"What? Why? How?" I stammered at her.

"It looked like fun," she told me with a smile. "And it was. I wanted to see how many I could do while the shower was running."

"Sure," I said. "Why not?"

I took the keys to the SUV out, got into the car, and drove to the police station. All the while, I was thinking up and practicing the fibs I was going to tell to explain how I'd located and apprehended so many men in such a short amount of time.

It turned out not to matter as shift change had happened while I was gone, and the new guy clearly decided it was best just not to ask.

When I took my body receipts, I just made a bunch of vague statements to Connie and Lula until they pretty much decided that Ranger and his men had cleaned up my skip list for me.

Part of me wanted to be offended that they didn't think I could have done it myself, but they had a point.

I hadn't done it myself.

Getting back into my car, I smiled at Steve who had just appeared inside while I was in the bonds office and looked to be alone this time. I twisted to look in the backseat, which was laden down with food.

I gave him a questioning look, and he said, "you didn't put your com back in, so I came to check on you. I thought it might be nice to eat without the other two underfoot?" When I grinned and nodded, he added, "I put some blankets in the trunk to sit on and keep you warm. Know anywhere we can go for a little quiet?"

"You mind if the pizza gets a little cold?" I asked.

"Not at all," Steve replied.

Forty five minutes later, Steve and I were at a little park in Point Pleasant. It was very off-season for all things Shore related, and the place was mostly a ghost town. Steve used one of the blankets he'd brought to make a shelter to shield us from the wind, and the other we cuddled under together. It wasn't warm, per se, but it was warm enough that I didn't feel the need to rush out of there or risk dying of exposure to the elements.

As we ate, I told Steve stories of growing up under the constantly watchful eye of The Burg in the shadow of my perfect sister Valerie, also known as "Saint Valerie". I also shared some of my wilder moments such as jumping off a roof trying to fly like Wonder Woman as a kid and sneaking out my bedroom window as a teen.

In turn, Steve told me about growing up the sick kid of a widowed mom during the Great Depression and how he learned to hate bullies so much. Which quickly morphed into stories of various spots Bucky'd had to get him out of.

I shared about how I went to college, got married, caught my husband cheating, got divorced, lost my job, and then blackmailed my way into my current job as a bounty hunter.

Steve told me about going to recruitment center after recruitment center, lying on enlistment forms, continually getting rejected, and then finally having Dr. Erskine take a chance on then select him for the super soldier program.

I explained about coming across Morelli again as an adult when he was my first bounty hunter case, managing to bring him in while also clearing his name, and then starting up the on/off relationship that involved multiple maybe engagements and my final realization that he was just jerking me around that had cause me to break up with him. I also honestly shared about my occasional encounters with Ranger, the limits he'd placed on our non-relationship, and my eventual decision that flirtation and innuendo weren't enough for me either. Which brought me to the place where I was ready to explore whatever Steve and I were going to become.

Steve told me about Bucky's failed attempts to find him a girl before the war, Peggy, and the devastation of waking up seventy years in the future to find her sharp mind lost. He explained how he threw himself into work as a coping mechanism, rebuffed Natasha's attempts to set him up, and how sad he was when Peggy died. But apparently in one of her more lucid moments, she'd written him a letter that had been delivered after her death. He didn't tell me exactly what it said, but he explained how healing it had been and how he now felt ready to consider the future- including finding someone new.

By the end it was getting dark, and try as I might to hide it, Steve figured out that my teeth were chattering and our makeshift shelter wasn't keeping me warm enough anymore. So he'd wrapped me up in both blankets and carried me back to the SUV like a fluffy Stephanie burrito.

He did so at a run, and I was laughing hysterically by the time we got there. By the time I wiggled my way out after he set me sideways on the driver's seat, he was laughing too, standing in the door and mostly blocking the breeze.

I stared up at him, looking way more light and at ease than I would have assumed he was capable of before I met him, and I felt something in me slide into place inside of me.

I was overcome with a feeling of rightness.

He obviously picked up on my change in mood from playful to serious because he stopped laughing but stayed relatively relaxed as he tilted his head to the side and asked, "what?"

Honest to God, I couldn't help myself.

I reached up, laced my fingers behind his head and neck, and pulled his lips down to mine for our first real kiss.

He drew in a breath right before our lips met, like he was preparing himself, and it was absolutely adorable.

Of course as our mouths opened and we sunk into a deeper, more thorough exploration, he no longer seemed adorable per se. He was sexy as hell. In terms of relationships, there may have only really been Peggy before, but it was clear that he had gotten plenty of experience elsewhere.

"I'll have to ask him about that sometime," I thought. Then I lost all ability to think.

When he eventually pulled back, we stared at each other for a few moments longer. Then a particularly powerful gust of wind blew into the car and made me shiver, breaking the spell.

"Hands," Steve said huskily in warning as he stepped back and then proceeded to shut the door for me. He quickly opened the back and placed the blankets inside before jogging the rest of the way around to the passenger seat.

He slammed his door shut and looked at me expectantly, "Come on, Steph. Start the car and get the heat going."

"There was plenty of heat," I teased even as I turned the key in the ignition.

In response, Steve leaned partway over the console and pulled me to him, pressing a kiss of his own to my lips.

"Probably not helping the windows defog," I said with a laugh when he sat back once more. "I'm not sure I care though."

"I'll keep my hands to myself." Steve promised before adding, "for now. Besides kissing you is very distracting, and you have some people after you. If they got to you because I was too wrapped up in kissing you to notice they were coming, I would never live that down."

I smiled at him one more time before turning to face forward and turning the SUV toward home.

Once we got there, I was pleasantly surprised that neither Sam nor Natasha was overly nosy. They asked if we had a good time, but they dropped it once we answered that we had.

My furniture was pushed to the side once more, and we then spent the next couple hours alternating between them showing me some self defense moves and taking breaks.

They probably had figured out that I was not the most physically fit person, but they didn't push or take digs at me for it. Instead they worked to make sure I was comfortable while, I was certain, testing my limits.

At one point, I apologized saying, "I'm sorry. I know I'm out of shape, I just HATE running. And I can't seem to make myself do it."

"If you don't like it," Steve said, "then don't do it."

"Wait what?" I was a little shocked by this since I figured they would be trying to push me to be able to run a 7 minute mile for safety or something.

"If you hate running, don't do it. That's terrible motivation, and you'll struggle to make yourself do it or make any real progress. You shouldn't force yourself to do something you dread. Instead, find something you DO like, and do that. Or if you're dead set on making yourself run, which I get would be useful with your job, then work the thing you actually like into it. Run a bit, do the activity. Then repeat," Steve face looked eager as he told me this.

Huh. That… actually made sense. The only times I ever ran were when Ranger or my pants made me (by not buttoning).

"I don't know what I like," I replied slowly because I was searching my brain for something. How did you tell someone you had a crush on (and were definitely developing feelings for) who was clearly physically fit and worked out a ton that you hated exercise?

"If you want, we can help you find something," he offered. "But only if you want."

"Are you going to make me wake up before the sun is even out to exercise?" I asked suspiciously.

Steve held up his fingers in turn saying, "1) I am not going to make you do anything you don't want to do, and 2) see again, you shouldn't make yourself do anything you don't want to do or dread doing. If it's hard to wake up early to exercise but you want to, great. Then you push yourself and that's when you exercise. But if the very idea of that makes you want to burrow into your bed and never leave, then do it another time."

Wow. I never knew exercise could be like that. Ranger always made me get up at what felt like the middle of the night and go when he was making me run.

"You pretty much make your own schedule anyway, right?" Sam asked.

That was a good point. I usually got to the bonds office around 9, but there was nothing that actually said I had to do that. I didn't have set hours.

"This is refreshing to even think about," I said.

"Well good," Natasha said. "Any idea what you might like to try?"

"I don't even know where to start," I told her truthfully.

She, Sam, and occasionally Steve started listing off various options emphasizing the value of doing things that were cardio oriented some days and things that were geared toward strength on others.

When they finally came to a stop, I felt a little like a kid in a candy shop when I said, "everything. I think I want to try a little of everything."